And 10 minutes ago got approved for Walmart store $700 while shopping on the website.

I have $317 and $198 hospital collection from 2005, 3 student loan Nelnet lates from 2006, a Sallie Mae student loan charge-off from 2006, $700 Sprint collection from 2006, 1 CapOne late from 2008 (authorized user on fiances account), and $80 medical collection from 2007 that was just put on my report in 2009

I have 9 inquiries, 5 of which will fall next month.

Also my car loan was started in 2006 and I've never been late, and am current with Nelnet havent been late since 2006.

I know it's a mess but what can I do to help my score? I appreciate anyone's pearls of wisdom!

Re: New here. 1st Post. Help me improve my credit, please!?

I would recommend not applying for new credit. You have 8 revolving trades now (9 if you include the AU), which is a lot. Two of them opened this year (Macy's & Walmart). Keep paying on time, keep your utilization under 10%. Perhaps someone else can talk to whether or not the Cap One account will drop off if you ask to be removed as an AU, but if it is one of your more recent lates, it may help to be off of it (if it will drop off -- and if the utilization % on that account isn't ultra-low overall).

Biggest thing is not to keep opening new trades. You have established several accounts, now let them age (in good standing, of course!).

Utilization, letting the derogs fall off, not having a lot of new inquieries, and paying on time.

TransUnion 696 4/15/2010Equifax 683 4/15/2010

TransUnion 675 8/30/2010Equifax 688 8/30/2010

Still trying to get my scores up =\ Opening new trades in the last 12 months didn't help. =(

Re: New here. 1st Post. Help me improve my credit, please!?

jrdenver wrote:

I would recommend not applying for new credit. You have 8 revolving trades now (9 if you include the AU), which is a lot. Two of them opened this year (Macy's & Walmart). Keep paying on time, keep your utilization under 10%. Perhaps someone else can talk to whether or not the Cap One account will drop off if you ask to be removed as an AU, but if it is one of your more recent lates, it may help to be off of it (if it will drop off -- and if the utilization % on that account isn't ultra-low overall).

Biggest thing is not to keep opening new trades. You have established several accounts, now let them age (in good standing, of course!).

Utilization, letting the derogs fall off, not having a lot of new inquieries, and paying on time.

From my experience with Capital One, once you are removed as an AU it will just stop reporting. It will not fall off automatically.

But you can easily dispute with reasons being that this is someone else's account and the entire TL will be deleted.

Re: New here. 1st Post. Help me improve my credit, please!?

Welcome. Hopefully you can take time to read around and get answers to several of your questions but I will address them a bit here as well.

First, you have quite a lot of store cards..bank cards look better so I would suggest not getting any more cards and focus on paying what you have on time. Do you have balances on the cards? That can make quite a difference and if you do, focus on paying them off and then keeping them at $0 or very low (you do NOT have to pay interest to have a good FICO score).

Also, your credit is all very new so your score will increase with age.

So what you can do:

HIPPA prevents medical information from being in the public, so you can ask for the medical collections to be removed (search this site for how to do that). You might also want to contact the providers and see if you can work out a payment with them so they will remove it from your account.

Sallie Mae and Nelnet might respond to a Goodwill letter (Esentially asking them to please remove the charge-off information from your credit report) but most likely you will have to wait until those fall off (7 years total). GW letter information can be found on this site. (You can try doing the same for Sprint)

I would remove myself from any AU card that had a late unless they can goodwill the bank. This resulted in my scores going from 730s to 790s when I removed myself from a card with a late though so...

Finally, you are paying $7 a month (ie, $84 a year) for a card??? Yikes!! since that card isn't your oldest, I would call them and tell them if they don't remove your fee, you will cancel. For that low limit and that high a fee, it's not worth it in my opinion.

So basically, to sum up, the best way to work on your score is stay good on all accounts from now on and to try goodwilling the companies that you have "baddies" with and ask them to remove the info from your credit report.

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION: All FICO® Score products made available on myFICO.com include a FICO® Score 8, along with additional FICO® Score versions. Your lender or insurer may use a different FICO® Score than the versions you receive from myFICO, or another type of credit score altogether. Learn more

FICO, myFICO, Score Watch, The score lenders use, and The Score That Matters are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fair Isaac Corporation. Equifax Credit Report is a trademark of Equifax, Inc. and its affiliated companies. Many factors affect your FICO Score and the interest rates you may receive. Fair Isaac is not a credit repair organization as defined under federal or state law, including the Credit Repair Organizations Act. Fair Isaac does not provide "credit repair" services or advice or assistance regarding "rebuilding" or "improving" your credit record, credit history or credit rating. FTC's website on credit.